KINSHASA, Congo — Congo has agreed to allow the World Health Organization to use an experimental Ebola vaccine to combat an outbreak announced last week, the WHO director-general said Monday.

The aim is for health officials to start using the vaccine
by the end of the week, or next week if there are difficulties, director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

‘‘We have agreement, registration, plus import permit — everything formally agreed already,” he said. “And as you know that vaccine is safe and efficacious and has been already tested. So I think we can all be prepared. All is ready now to use it.’’

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The outbreak was announced last week in Bikoro, in Congo’s northwest. Health officials traveled there after Congo’s Equateur provincial health ministry on May 3 alerted them to 17 deaths from a hemorrhagic fever.